Logie to Levin on Bush's "Deliberate Perfidy and Treachery"

My similarly named father, the former Mayor of Grand Rapids, Michigan, has put his knowledge of executive office to good use in this response to Senator Carl Levin's recent floor statement regarding the Senate Intelligence Committee's Phase II Report. Here's what Dad wrote:

Now in my 38th of private law practice, including 12 years as Mayor of Grand Rapids, I have read with both interest and dismay the full text of your remarks. In 1866, writing the opinion for the Supreme Court's decision in Ex Parte Milligan, Justice David Davis wrote:

The nation has "no right to expect that it will always have wise and humane rulers, sincerely attached to the principles of the Constitution. Wicked men, ambitious of power, with hatred of liberty and contempt of law, may fill the place once occupied by Washington and Lincoln."

This recent "final" disclosure of the deliberate perfidy and treachery by the President and Vice President regarding a connection between Osama and Saddam and the suborning of CIA Director Tenet, are lies more egregious than even Richard Nixon's coverups. Not in the least because of the now thousands of American lives lost, and the tenfold loss of the people of Iraq.

But these latest revelations, must share space with numerous other assaults on our laws, eg. Lying about WMDs, Lying about uranium from Niger, Deliberately disregarding laws passed by Congress and the Geneva Convention, through torture and secret detainee camps outside the United States, and much more. Indeed, this President has said, in direct violation of established statutes, and decisions of our Supreme Court, that he alone can justify such actions by including them in his war on terror. Presents Andrew Johnson and William Clinton were both impeached for significantly less serious matters, and therefore stayed in office.

Isn't is obvious that we are being led by "Wicked men, ambitious of power, with hatred of liberty and contempt of law?" There is only one remedy: Impeachment of President Bush. Very few people fully understand that Impeachment is a special process to inquire and decide whether the President has violated the law enough to be removed from office. The House of Representatives approves one or more Articles of Impeachment. The Articles are like an indictment. The trial is in the Senate, with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presiding. The Senate should impeach the President if it finds that he has committed one or more high crimes or misdemeanors. If impeached, he is removed from office. No criminal trial, no jail time, simply separated from the job, and any opportunity to continue his wrongdoings.

NOW is the time to raise the issue. Over 50 years ago, H.L. Mencken wrote: "Anyone in favor of common sense, common honesty and common decency is thereby ineligible for public office." Until now I have worked hard to disagree with that cynical assessment. But the work today is much harder and the elected men and women with those 3 good traits more difficult to identify.

We need a lot of those peope, like yourself, with seniority, honor, and character, to focus this November's elections on the only question with any real meaning for the future of our country. On November 7th all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs, as are roughly a third of the Senate. EVERY candidate from either party for a House seat should be asked: "If the House Judiciary Committee votes out one or more Articles of Impeachment, will you vote AYE when it comes to the floor?" And every Senate candidate should be asked: "If you determine, after hearing the evidence at trial, that this President has committed "High Crimes and Misdemeanors", will you vote AYE to impeach him?"

There really is no other issue of equal importance before us.

I want to close with a piece of Justice Louis D Brandeis's opinion in Olmstead vs. United States (1928) on government accountability:

"Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites everyman to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that, in the administrations of law, the end justifies the means would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this court should resolutely set its face."

When President Bush is lined up alongside this time-honored standard, he doesn't even begin to measure up, and should be ordered to leave.

John H. Logie, Sr.
Mayor of Grand Rapids, MI 1991-2003